Designer: Indenting bulleted lists

[modiophile]

How can I indent the text in a bulleted list so that the text all aligns.
 

Desired result:

• This is what I am trying to achieve,
  with a bulleted list.

Default result:

• This is how a bulleted list looks,

       on Affinity designer by default.
 

I know where to access the Paragraph > Left Indent tool, but unfortunately it only affects the first line!

Has anybody been able to figure this out? I do know its possible with tabs on Illustrator, see https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2265154 Unfortunately, tabs don't work the same way on Designer.
 

[toltec]

In the Paragraph panel. Set the indent to something like .2 inch. Then set a Tab Stop for the same amount. Paste the bullet, then press Tab for the first line. Here you can see I have also set a space after the paragraph.

Hope that helps 

 

[modiophile]

4 hours ago, toltec said:

In the Paragraph panel. Set the indent to something like .2 inch. Then set a Tab Stop for the same amount. Paste the bullet, then press Tab for the first line. Here you can see I have also set a space after the paragraph.

Hope that helps 

 

Thanks for the response!

I seem to be messing up somewhere. This is what I have so far...

1. Set Left Indent to 0.118"
2. Set Tab stop for 0.02"
3. Pasted the bullet, then pressed Tab for the first line.
4. ??? If I press Return for the second line, any spacing whether with Tab or the space bar gets ignored.
5. ??? Alternatively, if I use a soft Return (shift + Return), then I can line up the spacing by tabbing several times on the second line. The issue with this approach is that the top line of text and bottom line of text become two independent pieces and the leading between them is off.
    

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, modiophile said:

I know where to access the Paragraph > Left Indent tool, but unfortunately it only affects the first line!

[toltec]

Ignore the line spacing for now.

 

Here I set the indent and tab to the same (.5)

 

Inserted the text and pasted the bullet. Pressed Tab which set the first line to the indent. 

 

As you can see, there are some Shift enters for the soft returns.

 

 

Set hard returns or use Space after Paragraph.

[R C-R]

@modiophile

Which version of Designer & which OS (Mac or PC) are you using?

 

In your screenshot, it looks like both the Left Indent & First Line Indent are set to the same value (0.118"). Apparently, at least on Macs the First Line Indent is automatically (& annoyingly!) set to the same value that you enter for the Left Indent, but you can reset the First Line Indent to zero afterward to fix that.

 

Also, if you have already entered text & it spans more than one paragraph, make sure all the paragraphs are selected when you set or change values in the Paragraph panel, or those values will only apply to the currently selected paragraph.

[toltec]

6 hours ago, modiophile said:

Thanks for the response!

I seem to be messing up somewhere. This is what I have so far...

1. Set Left Indent to 0.118"
2. Set Tab stop for 0.02"
3. Pasted the bullet, then pressed Tab for the first line.
4. ??? If I press Return for the second line, any spacing whether with Tab or the space bar gets ignored.
5. ??? Alternatively, if I use a soft Return (shift + Return), then I can line up the spacing by tabbing several times on the second line. The issue with this approach is that the top line of text and bottom line of text become two independent pieces and the leading between them is off.

 

.2 not .02

 

Too many zeros. The tab needs to be the same value as the indent. More or less.

 

Sorry, my screen grab might have thrown you off, although I did say .2  "Set the indent to something like .2 inch Then set a Tab Stop for the same amount".

 

I'm not 100% sure why the screen grab says .02. I obviously set the tab to .2 to get it all to line up. 

[R C-R]

@toltec

On Windows, do you see the same annoying behavior I mentioned above about setting the Left Indent also setting the First Line Indent to the same value, which is what I see on my Mac?

 

I suspect this is by design, based on the assumption that if a paragraph's left indent is set to >0, then the user usually intends for first line to be indented by the same amount. 

[toltec]

No. Works as expected. 

 

However. if you set the Indent, the first tab seems to set itself to that value.

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, toltec said:

No. Works as expected. 

 

However. if you set the Indent, the first tab seems to set itself to that value.

Hmmm. I just checked again in Affinity Designer 1.5.5 for Mac, & in the AD Mac customer beta & in Affinity Photo 1.5.2 for Mac. All of them show the same behavior -- when I set the Left Indent value the First Line Indent value is automatically set to the same value. That may have happened for @modiophile because his screenshot shows both set to the same value:

 

I don't see the first (or any) tab being set automatically to anything other than the default tab stop value. Speaking of that, in both your & modiophile's screenshots, it does not look like any tab stops have been set. The "0.02 in" shown is just the default value that will be used if you click the "Add New Tab Stop" button to the right of that numeric entry field, but until you do that, the list of set tab stops on the left will be empty, signifying that no tab stops have been set. That is probably why your screenshot doesn't match the indentation of the text.

 

I also noticed yet another oddity in the Mac Paragraph panel: when I set the Left Indent to some value & the First Indent adjusts to match it & then reset the First Indent to zero, if I then decrease the Left Indent value, the First Indent value adjusts proportionally to a negative value:

However, this doesn't actually create an 'outdent' & the moment I touch that value it reverts to 0 or a positive value. So there is definitely something funky going in that panel, at least for the Mac apps.

[toltec]

I've been playing around researching too.

 

I found that the bullet really seems to mess things up. Best method, so far!

 

Insert the text.

Put the bullet in a different frame and remove the extra carriage return Windows (or Designer) seems to put in. Set the size of the bullet. Copy the bullet

In the text, press the returns and paste the bullets (Ctrl + V)

 

Set the indent. That seems to set a Tab (or indent stop?) for the first indent.

Press tab for the first lines, then it all lines up.

 

No need to set a tab that way.

 

What a bleedin' palaver 

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, toltec said:

I found that the bullet really seems to mess things up.

I don't see any problems using it with a Mac. On the U.S. & possibly other Apple keyboards, the bullet character can be entered directly by typing the 8 key with the alt/option key held down (Shift+option+8 enters the degree symbol.)

 

But regardless of that, did you see what I wrote about there being no tab stops in the screenshots? If the section below "Tab Stops" in the panel is empty, there are no tab stops set in the currently selected paragraph(s). The text field with the up/down arrows next to the two buttons does not indicate any tab stops have been set, only the value (or increment) that will be set if the add stop button is clicked.

[toltec]

13 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But regardless of that, did you see what I wrote about there being no tab stops in the screenshots? If the section below "Tab Stops" in the panel is empty, there are no tab stops set in the currently selected paragraph(s). The text field with the up/down arrows next to the two buttons does not indicate any tab stops have been set, only the value (or increment) that will be set if the add stop button is clicked.

 

Yes, Designer seems to be setting a tab to the indent automatically.

 

Although I set a tab originally when setting the indents up, somewhere along the line that tab went missing (might have been me) and whilst experimenting, Designer set one automatically so I didn't notice My tab had gone missing 

 

◘ thats Alt + 8 on a PC

 

p.s, Do you get an extra return after the bullet ?

 

 

[R C-R]

Just now, toltec said:

Yes, Designer seems to be setting a tab to the indent automatically.

I cannot duplicate than in any Mac version of Designer or Photo. Are you sure you are not confusing the default tab stop setting with actually setting a tab stop?

[toltec]

Yes. I'm sure.

 

It was confusing me too, (as you might have noticed )

 

So I tried half a dozen times. 

 

All I did was press the tab key. Designer decided to put the text aligned to the indent.

[lepr]

.

[R C-R]

46 minutes ago, toltec said:

All I did was press the tab key. Designer decided to put the text aligned to the indent.

Your screenshot of the Paragraph panel still does not show that you have set any tab stops. Pressing the tab key does not set a tab stop. It just inserts a tab character in the text at the insertion point. If there are no tab stops set in that paragraph there is no place for it to 'stop' (so to speak) & the next character you type will just be placed wherever the indents, margin, & justifications of the frame dictate.

 

In your first screenshot in your last post, it looks like the insertion point is at the beginning of a new line. If the Paragraph panel in the next screenshot is what it looks like with that insertion point active, you do not have any tab stops set, at least for that new paragraph. If you did, the tab stop would appear as indicated below:

The Paragraph formatting online beta help topic is for Macs but it should be the same for windows. Note what it says about how to add tab stops. If you never click on the Add New Tab Stop button, no tab stop will be added. That button is immediately to the right of the tab stop input box, set to "0 mm" in your screenshot.

[toltec]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Your screenshot of the Paragraph panel still does not show that you have set any tab stops.

 

 

 

That's because I deliberately didn't set any on that file because I wanted to show you that Designer aligned the tab (or first indent tab ?) to the left indent automatically. No tabs required !!!

 

 

[toltec]

Happy now ?

 

Good grief 

[R C-R]

11 minutes ago, toltec said:

That's because I deliberately didn't set any on that file because I wanted to show you that Designer aligned the tab (or first indent tab ?) to the left indent automatically. No tabs required !!!

There is no tab stop so of course inserting a tab in the text won't do anything besides set the text insertion point to the left or first indent of the paragraph. What did you expect to happen?

 

Edit: an indent is not a tab. Is that maybe what is confusing you?

[toltec]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

There is no tab stop so of course inserting a tab in the text won't do anything besides set the text insertion point to the left or first indent of the paragraph. What did you expect to happen?

 

 

So why does pressing "Tab" set the "First Line Indent" to the "Left Indent" ???

 

In that case a tab is an indent, or is it a tab substituting for an indent, or an indent substituting for a tab.  Gosh, now I really am confused.

[toltec]

20 minutes ago, R C-R said:

There is no tab stop so of course inserting a tab in the text won't do anything besides set the text insertion point to the left or first indent of the paragraph. What did you expect to happen?

 

Actually, thinking about it, with no tab set, I didn't expect anything to happen. 

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, toltec said:

So why does pressing "Tab" set the "First Line Indent" to the "Left Indent" ???

Do you mean pressing the Tab key on the keyboard or the Add New Tab Stop button in the Paragraph panel? Either way, neither one sets any of the indents (first line, left, or right).

 

Each paragraph will have exactly one of each type of indent, but a paragraph can have as many tabs & tab stops as you want. Tabs & indents are not the same thing, nor does one substitute for the other.

[toltec]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Do you mean pressing the Tab key on the keyboard or the Add New Tab Stop button in the Paragraph panel? Either way, neither one sets any of the indents (first line, left, or right).

 

Each paragraph will have exactly one of each type of indent, but a paragraph can have as many tabs & tab stops as you want. Tabs & indents are not the same thing, nor does one substitute for the other.

 

Pressing the tab key (on the keyboard) automatically positions the first line indent text, to the left indent position. Even with absolutely no tabs stops set in the Paragraph panel.

[R C-R]

Just now, toltec said:

Pressing the tab key (on the keyboard) automatically positions the first line indent to the left indent position. Even with absolutely no tabs stops set in the Paragraph panel.

No, all that does is insert a tab character in the text at the current text insertion point. It has no effect on the first line or left (or right) indent setting of the paragraph, & it will not do anything to position the following text unless a tab stop is set in that paragraph.